The wounds have remained in the hearts of thousands of Kosovar families who continue to wait for the remains and dead bodies of murdered family members, while others still have not extinguished the hope that their missing family members may return alive.

The Youth Initiative for Human Rights, YIHR, in Kosovo, an NGO, organized a symbolic event in the main square in Prishtina on Thursday as a sign of solidarity with the unknown fate of the people who were forcefully disappeared during the Kosovo war.

In their symbolic action in front of the Memorial of Missing Persons, YIHR unveiled a plaque written in five languages, in the official languages of Kosovo and in Turkish, Romani and English.

Marigona Shabiu, executive director at YIHR, said the memorial placed there a few years ago did not properly identify who it was dedicated to.

“This action is a criticism of the public institutions that have not done enough for the civilian victims during the war in Kosovo, including those who have not been found, starting from the maintenance of the memorials and their placement in important, visible spaces,” Shabiu declared.

Prime Minister Albin Kurti and the Assembly Speaker, Glauk Konjufca, paid tribute to the Memorial for the Missing in front of the Kosovo Assembly.

They also paid tribute in Meja village on the anniversary of the Meja massacre.

“April 27 is the day when we commemorate the massacre of Meja, but it is also the Day of the Forcefully Disappeared People in Kosovo, of those who were forcibly abducted by the genocidal regime of [Slobodan] Milosevic, which, in addition to abducting them and their loved ones from many families, stole their corpses in an attempt to hide the traces of the committed crimes,” Kurti said.

Kurti said the country needs justice and responsibility so that the criminals, the culprits, the executors and the orderers of these crimes end up behind bars.

The President of Kosovo, Vjosa Osmani, said on this day that the violent disappearance of Kosovar civilians committed by the enemy was one of the ugliest crimes of the Serbian regime under Milosevic.

“Today, our thoughts are with their families and we stand in solidarity with their daily pain and anxiety. The violent disappearance of over thousands of our citizens, including many children, was a clear attempt to wipe out a people,” said Osmani.

Assembly Speaker Konjufca said the kidnapping and violent disappearance of thousands of Albanians was one among the many crimes of Serbia’s genocide.

He reiterated that the state of Serbia was responsible for over 1,600 people who remain missing.

“Even today, more than 1,600 remain unaccounted for, not because we don’t know where they are, we know exactly where they are, we also know who is responsible, it is the state of Serbia and the very fact that many bodies were found in institutions that were built by Serbia itself, Serbia knows exactly where they are,” Konjufca said.

Meja massacre perpetrators known but not punished

On April 27, 1999, in the village of Meja, a few kilometers northwest of the city of Gjakova, Serbian troops expelled the inhabitants of the surrounding villages and burned many houses.

They then separated the men and boys into groups and shot them dead.

BIRN found that the testimony at Hague Tribunal trials revealed how dozens of Serbian officers and troops were involved in killing hundreds of people in the villages of Meja and Korenica in 1999, but none of them had ever been indicted.

In August 2022, the Association for War Crimes, Gjakova 98-99, submitted three criminal charges for war crimes committed in Gjakova to the Special Prosecutor’s Office of Kosovo against the former commander of the 549th Motorized Brigade and now vice President of the Serbian parliament, Bozhidar Delic.

The organization’s representative, who is also a survivor of the Meja Massacre, Gjokë Sokoli, said they have evidence that Delic, despite being an general of the Serbian army during the war, also committed crimes as a civilian, and separated people from the convoy, and that committed crimes in the Massacre of Meja, Krusha and Korenica.

In June 1999, Kosovo emerged from the war with over 6,000 missing persons.